Pinnacle has enjoyed a highly successful 2017. We have added ten new full-time employees this year and now have 28 credentialed actuaries on staff, with another two actuarial analysts anticipating earning their Associate credential of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) in the spring of 2018.

How does an organization protect itself from reputational risk? Purchasing cyber liability coverage, adding safeguards to its IT systems, ensuring its employees behave in a professional manner both inside and outside the company walls and paying close attention to social media platforms come to mind. But are all of these even enough? Most organizations understand they must plan ahead and be prepared to get out in front of an adverse event to reassure their audiences that business will go on as usual.

Pinnacle recently hosted the 4th annual Pinnacle U event in our Bloomington office. Pinnacle U is a collaborative effort between Illinois State University (ISU) and Pinnacle that provides a wide array of training and development opportunities for its participants. The event is also a tangible response to the strategic plan of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), which lists improving communications and relationships with candidates and academics as a top priority.

Celebrating and Appreciating an Outstanding Year

Pinnacle’s growth has been spectacular during the past 12 months. We recently hired two highly-experienced credentialed actuaries, Linda Brobeck in San Francisco and Terrence Wright in Atlanta. Two of our Actuarial Analysts, Daniel Teuma and Nick Alicea, were conferred with the Associate of the Casualty Actuarial Society (ACAS) credential at the November 2016 CAS Annual Meeting. Pinnacle currently counts 28 credentialed actuaries among our staff. At the start of 2016 we had 20, and in 2003, when Pinnacle was founded, we had 10.

So much has been written about autonomous self-driving cars (automated vehicles or AV) and all of it is simply fascinating. The technology is evolving quickly and the research in this field will affect each and every one of us in unforeseen ways. Looking back just 7-8 years ago, smartphones were being adopted by the masses. My, how our lives have changed – generally for the better, but with some definite downsides.